AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was prepared to release three men convicted of sex offenses against children, Texas officials said, in an apparent misapplication by authorities of enforcement directives from President Joe Biden’s administration.
The three were not released after discussions in recent weeks between the state prison system and immigration authorities. But the process of keeping them in custody raised alarms that ICE was declining to detain convicts contrary to immigration law, officials said.
ICE has dropped “detainer” requests against 26 people in Texas in recent weeks, said Jason Clark, chief of staff at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Immigration authorities issue detainers to local or state law enforcement agencies holding a person who is potentially in the U.S. illegally. When a person in the U.S. illegally completes their sentence for a crime, ICE can seek to take them into immigration custody.
In previous years, including under the administrations of Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, ICE would not drop that many detainers from the Texas prison system in a year, Clark said.
Most of the 26 were convicted of drug charges or drunken-driving offenses, according to state records obtained by The Associated Press. But two were convicted of sexually assaulting a teenager and a third was convicted of indecency with a child.